Aidan Johnson: Censorship hurts gays most of all

Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada wrapped up its hearings on the William Whatcott matter. The case asked whether the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission should have the power to prosecute anti-gay pamphleteer Whatcott for homophobic speech. Now, the judges have to decide between two subtly different views on the Charter of Rights. The first says that gay rights under the Charter are entwined with free speech, and that one requires the other. The second says that the court’s duty to protect gay equality binds it to censor hate.

Many of my fellow gay rights advocates — gay as well as straight — are of the mind that censorship must rule the day. There is an irony in this. Censorship is the historic and present enemy of gay freedom. Without free speech, there would be no gay rights.

Related

In the early 20th century, the first gay rights groups were formed. They called for reforms that most people saw as scandal. Free speech was their shield. Today, in the many lives improved by gay liberation (including straight lives made freer as by-product), we see some of the good that free speech can bring.

In the late 1990s, I came out as a 15-year-old at my high school in Hamilton, Ont. I told my friends I was gay, and didn’t bother hiding the fact at school. As a result, I was subjected to regular physical violence. The verbal harassment was daily. So I campaigned. Shortly after graduation, I saw results: a new school board policy, mandating that existing rules on school violence be followed. None of this would have been possible without solid free speech laws — my right to say that I’m gay, and my right to demand equal treatment.

On the national level, we need a roughly similar policy. Violence against gay people is already criminal. Speech that directly provokes such violence is criminal, too. But we need to take anti-gay violence more seriously, particularly in our schools. As the Supreme Court prepared for Whatcott, gay rights advocates across Canada were riveted by news of the death of Jamey Rodemeyer. A 14-year-old-boy in Buffalo, N.Y., Jamey killed himself because he could not handle anti-gay harassment at school.

Some argue that prosecuting hate speakers will protect youth like Rodemeyer. But there is little reason to think that censoring the most public arguments against gay equality will have a real, net positive impact on gays, of any age. Censoring pamphleteers like Whatcott — or clerics who preach that gays were made wrong by God and will go to Hell if they have sex — will not persuade the many parents who raise their children with anti-gay bias. (Indeed, it might drive some further toward anti-gay bitterness.)

Yet it is precisely these parents that we really need to worry about. They are the ones suggesting to our youth, sometimes through silence, that gay-bashing is not necessarily horrific.

Of course, no one is proposing going into private homes and telling parents what they must say and not say about homosexuality. But this is what the state would have to do, if we were serious about censoring those forms of expression that really have an impact on gays.

Public messages do matter. And if we refuse to censor anti-gay statements, gays will have to endure some hateful, crass or stereotyping statements in the media. This will impact how we see ourselves, gay as well as straight.

But the up-side is tremendous. We will have defended the free speech laws that created modern gay rights, and that (much more importantly) gay people may have to rely on again. We will have defended the freedom of religion and conscience, which is also bound up with sexual liberty, as elements in an unfettered search for meaning in life. And we will have denied bigots the chance to be martyrs — a glory that the Bill Whatcotts of the world have done precious little to deserve.

Choosing not to censor hate speech isn’t a perfect choice. But it is the right one.